Chapter 17 Chapter Seventeen

He dreamed of that roof again, with dark clouds hanging low in the cold, damp air—he saw the sky for the first time.His mother's windbreaker covered his whole body, blocking the gloomy light, but it couldn't prevent the dirty and salty seawater from hitting his face.The young mother trembled all over, rolling up her wet sleeves.He could feel her goosebumps.He wanted to shout out, but in the roaring waves, he couldn't make a sound.In the turbulent sea water, except for the roof where I was, everything else disappeared, including the black shadow floating in the waves. He never saw the man again.

wake up. April 2.Monday.In the morning, 1:01. Seven-year-old Tamada Shota opened his eyes and found himself still lying in his mother's arms.Mom was so sleepy that she couldn't support herself and fell asleep, holding him tightly with both hands.They huddled up on the second floor of the Future Dream Mall, in the corner of the children's clothing store away from the atrium, so that they could not see the surviving men carrying the corpses. Zhengtai lightly raised her mother's hand and slipped out from under her armpit, fortunately she didn't wake her up.The light hit her face, painting her with a strange color, like a character in a painting.His mother is very beautiful. Although he has hardly dressed up for himself in recent years, he thinks that if he is an adult, he will definitely pursue his mother desperately.Quietly walked out of the children's clothing store, and looked back while walking, so as not to wake up suddenly and catch him back in a panic.

Finally, he escaped from his mother's grasp and came to the edge of the atrium on the second floor.The corpses piled up on the ground floor have disappeared, leaving messy ruins and bloodstains all over the floor.He heard footsteps in the corridor on the second floor, and immediately hid in a branded women's shoe store nearby.Through the high heels of various colors, the boy saw two men dragging two dead bodies from the opposite store.He remembered the two men, one worked in the supermarket, and the other wore a security uniform.They dragged the two bodies to the elevator entrance next to the wall, opened the elevator, and threw the bodies in.The security guard pressed a button into the elevator, but the two living people did not enter, and there were only two dead people in the elevator, and the door quickly closed and landed.

Zhengtai understood that they were cleaning up the corpses, and moving down the stairs was too strenuous, so they simply let the corpses take the elevator, while the living people still took the stairs, even if the elevator had an accident, it would not be dangerous. Zhengtai didn't dare to be spotted by the adults, especially the man who worked in the supermarket.Although Zhengtai doesn't dislike him at all, and thinks he is reliable on the contrary, as long as he sees him, he will definitely be sent back to his mother. The boy came to the ground floor lightly, and found that there was no one alive, probably like his mother, each of them went upstairs to occupy a store to rest.Only the elevator indicator light was still flashing, becoming a metal coffin going up and down.

When he was about to go to the basement, a voice sounded behind him: "Hey, kid!" He was huddled in fear, and just about to run forward, a figure stopped in front of him.He saw a pair of cold eyes.However, the boy is not afraid of these eyes, on the contrary he feels kindly, probably because these eyes match the underground environment very well. "Who are you?" the seven-year-old Zhengtai asked bluntly. The boy on the opposite side was a little surprised, lifted the long thin hair that covered his eyes, squatted down and said, "My name is Xiaoguang." "Who is Xiao Guang?" The boy spoke Chinese very well, and the other party probably didn't recognize that he was Japanese.

"Xiaoguang is me." "Brother, where are you from?" "Another world." Xiaoguang said these five words slowly, looking at the boy with a serious expression, not seeming to be joking or lying at all. Originally, Zhengtai's first reaction was: You are lying!After all, he is no longer a child, and will go to elementary school in a few months.However, looking at Xiaoguang's sincere eyes, he would rather believe it was true. "Why did you come here?" Zhengtai continued to question Xiaoguang. He replied honestly: "I came here to kill people."

"Who are you going to kill?" "If I told you, would I still be able to kill him?" Xiao Guang finally smiled, "I'm a killer." The seven-year-old boy discovered from the eyes of the eighteen-year-old boy that he was not lying. "Oh, then I'll keep it a secret for you, and I won't tell anyone." Just when Zhengtai answered seriously, there were two more girls behind Xiaoguang. I don't know if I heard the conversation just now. The boy felt that they were not very old, so he greeted them calmly, "Sister." "Wow!" One of the girls was very excited, hugged Xiao Guang and kissed her, "This lady's mouth is so sweet."

It is estimated that many children will call the senior high school girls Auntie. "I am Mrs. Zheng." This time he was finally innocent and said his name directly.However, the two senior high school girls didn't understand, they just thought the boy was good at talking. "Where is your mother?" another girl asked. Zhengtai panicked, afraid that if he said it, they would send him back. "At—" the boy pointed behind them.All three of them turned their heads, but Zhengtai turned and ran into the dark corridor. Girls' voices came from behind. Mrs. Zheng got into a small door and found a staircase leading to the ground, so she went down to the entrance of the Calford Supermarket on the basement level.

There was a "squeak" sound from the side. Zhengtai walked into the pet store outside the supermarket and saw a beige Labrador dog circling with its tail clamped tightly.There was a dog lying on the ground, also a Labrador, pure white, but it couldn't move anymore, and its stomach didn't rise or fall at all. Half of the wall hit the dog's head, killing it alive.A seven-year-old child understands what death is.He looked at the dead Labrador on the ground and felt a pang of sadness—more so than when he had seen the bodies piling up on the ground floor an hour earlier. The beige Labrador dog barked at its dead counterparts on the ground, spitting countless saliva from its mouth.It sniffed the corpses of its own kind, scratched them with its claws, and bit them with its mouth, as if it could wake up the dead.Until it is finally convinced: the pure white Labrador on the ground has walked into the garden of death.So it began to howl like a human cry.

This kind of heart-piercing made Zhengtai also feel sad. It was the first time he saw the dog shed tears, and his mother had never cried so sadly a year ago. Suddenly, Zhengtai touched the back of the beige Labrador.Ordinary people would not dare to approach such a sad dog, let alone touch it, but this seven-year-old boy was surprisingly bold, as if he had predicted that this dog would never hurt anyone.Sure enough, when Zhengtai touched the soft fur on its back and dusted it off, it turned its head obediently.No anger, just sad tears in the eyes.The boy cried too. Zhengtai's tears fell to the back of his feet.The dog turned and stuck out its tongue and licked the upper of his shoe, feeling the taste of human tears.Then, it buried its head in the boy's arms.

The boy hugged the dog tightly, like a long-lost relative, comforting its pain in this disaster, stroking its smelly fur, feeling its warm body temperature and the rapid heartbeat in his chest.The dog sticks out its tongue and licks the boy's face, and it can do anything for him from now on. The boy said in its ear: "Don't cry, your friend has gone to another world, it will be very happy, don't worry about it." The dog understood what he said, said "hmm" to the boy twice, and wagged its tail. "Can you take me somewhere else?" The Labrador understood what he said, looked back at the dead fellow, and let out a final howl. Passing through the empty and deserted corridors, it came to the second basement level of Calford Supermarket.Zhengtai remembered this place, where he was when the earthquake happened. His new friend smelled something important again, and led him through a passage to the third basement of the Future Dream Building.This is the parking lot, and there are various cars parked in the parking spaces, some of which have collided with each other, and some are still sounding alarms.He followed the dog around the parking lot.A wide driveway leads down to something deeper below.The boy thought, will it lead to the center of the earth? The Labrador barked, and rushed down, and Masa had to follow closely behind.It turned out that there were four floors underground, which were still parking lots.This place is more spacious and gloomy than upstairs, and more than half of the parking spaces are empty.Zhengtai ran wildly with the dog all the way, heard the sound of some kind of machinery running, and smelled a pungent diesel smell. No, not just this taste.A child with a particularly sensitive nose stopped to throw up and the Labrador barked. Because, it saw hell. The seven-year-old boy looked up, and he saw hell too.